The group had been running a delivery service for broken items since the start of lockdown in March
THE Repair Café in Splott is back in business and wants more customers and volunteers for its face-to-face service.
A change in restrictions for organised groups meant the event could be held in person again in November. Now organisers are hoping for a good turn-out at the Oasis Centre on December 12.
“It went really well actually,” said board director and operations manager Phoebe Brown, who was unsure about turnout at the November event.
“People [were] so pleased to be back together … and see familiar faces,”she said.
Free coffee was also provided by local company Handlebar Barista.
Repair Café Wales was started as a not-for-profit in 2017 to provide pop-up events for people to bring their broken items to be mended while having a drink and learning the skills to fix their items themselves.
Since lockdown in March the Splott and Cathays repair cafés have worked together to create a delivery service for items needing repairing. This involved people quarantining their items before delivering them to volunteers’ houses to be fixed.
However, the face-to-face repair café is now back under the new Welsh rule that organised groups can meet in groups of up to 15 indoors and up to 30 outdoors.
About 24 items were fixed in total including a head torch, watch, kid’s bike, hair dryer, and a pair of trousers.
“Someone looked at a gramophone,” said Ms Brown. Sadly, they could not fix it because it needed special parts.
“We often get lots of antiques [which are] really sentimental,” she said, and added that Repair Café Wales has some antique specialists amongst their volunteers, including one in Swansea.
The cafe relies on volunteers who can fix broken items, whether this is due to being trained professionally or just taking an interest in mending things.
“People might be retired electricians or do woodworking as a job [or] their mum might have taught them how to sew,” said Ms Brown.
Some of the volunteers only attend the repair cafés nearest them while some attend all six cafés run throughout Cardiff.
The upcoming repair café will also have some craft stalls for those looking for some Christmas present.
“Some of our volunteers run their own craft businesses in their own time”, said Ms Brown, “[and it would] make it a little more Christmassy”.
